Blood Summer
by inkasrain
Summary: Chapter Ten: Final Fragment. AU. Not the last chapter, incidentally.
1. Before and After

_Disclaimer: No copyright infingment intended whatsoever. If it's been on the show, it's not mine._

_Author's Note: This story takes place about seventy-five years after the return of Sozin's Comet and the deafeat of Fire Lord Ozai. I hope you enjoy it._

* * *

**Blood Summer**

_Chapter One: Before and After_

Later historians, when studying that curious period of carnage and slaughter, called it the Red Month. In recounting their tales and fantasies, the superstitious named it the Madness.

For Mai, it was the Blood Summer.

* * *

No one of intellect believed the stories anymore; how Sozin's Comet, blazing and terrible, had seared the heavens and turned the Fire Nation mad. Exaggeration, the scholars claimed. Simple enough to explain rationally; desperate for victory, Ozai had simply goaded his people into a patriotic frenzy and let them loose. The presence of the comet, they said, was merely a dramatic coincidence, fodder for the fools who twisted history to their advantage.

True, it was rare for such a manic state to be sustained for the long span of a month; unusual too, for the frenzy to work on so vast a population, and survive in the face of such outrageous horrors. But it was not inconceivable.

Not inconceivable.

* * *

Mai did not expect them to understand, nor did their ignorance concern her. She was deeply aware that that summer was far better as a bland note in the history books than anything nearer to true reincarnation; but regardless, she had long wondered at the ability of her children's children even to comprehend those dreadful truths. She had never been a bender, but whether through the intuition of age or some other instinct, she had no doubt; that ancient power was dying, draining from the world as the Avatar spirit before it. And as it died, so failed the ability of the young to understand.

And so Mai listened as the infant wise quoted their scholars, as they re-imagined the lives her friends had lived, as they volleyed theories of Ozai's Fall. She could have corrected them a thousand times over; she never did.

And she watched through dimming eyes as those who called themselves masters failed to produce what her friends once had in the blush of childhood. And Mai felt it within her as slowly, sadly, that once tremendous force became a skill, a talent, a mere curiosity.

It would likely outlive her. But not by very long.

* * *

These, however, were generally thoughts of the night, of the still hours when Mai lay alone and listened to the world. During the day, she occupied herself with life; with slow, stately walks, with painting, with tea. It was an absurdly dull life; she would have despised it when she was young, perhaps even spoken brashly of preferring death.

But Mai had seen enough of death, and had learned long ago not to wish for fate. Life, aching and quiet and precious and dull, was all she wanted now.

Her children wanted more.

* * *

The final blow had come suddenly, and innocently enough.

"Mother," her daughter Zana had said one evening. "Tomo wishes to speak with you. He's writing his thesis for the University, do you remember? He wants to interview you about…ah…" Zana stopped, tongue held by her brush with ever-threatening transgression. _But it must be said_.

Mai held up her good hand in silent warning, veined and lightly spotted, but still lily-white. Even her own children, through all the long years, had hesitated to question their mother of the past; she had only to shift her right hand in their sight to quell their questions. But in recent years the gesture and its implications seemed to have lost its potency. Death had grown huge in their beautiful eyes, it seemed, and they had begun to ask. Gently at first, but their voices grew steadily louder and more insistent as they aged together. It was history, they said, as they had so many times. Did she not want her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren, to know of her deeds? Would she not let them tell the world of their brilliant matriarch, who had fought so bravely as the longest war died in agony?

Unspoken beneath these high claims of familial honor, she could hear quite clearly their deeper intentions. They craved the knowledge, the answer to all the old mysteries that had drifted on the horizon of their childhoods like ancestral spirits. And they needed answers before their mother finally relinquished her grip on the living world.

"What did you say to him?" Mai's voice was softer now, but the old edge remained. "What does the boy expect to hear?"

Zana was silent for a moment.

"Whatever you wish to tell him, Mother."

* * *

Tomo came the following afternoon. Shrewd timing on the boy's part; it was early spring yet, and night would fall before long if either wished to end the interview abruptly. Mai's lips twitched in approval.

She waited on the small veranda behind the house, where she could watch winter as slowly lost its grip on the earth. Her youngest grandchild was prompt, of course, like every other dry-nosed scholar she had met. "Grandmother," he said as he knelt, with a solemnity so thick he might have been addressing her death-shrine. "I am honored that you have agreed to speak with me."

Mai studied him. Pale, serious, a streak of young arrogance dazzling his eyes; so very like her dead husband. Mai wondered, suddenly, what the boy saw as he looked at her like that. An old woman, clearly, though her face had not wrinkled so much as set deeper into its hard, familiar lines that spoke quite clearly of her age and attitude. Her hair was not gray but deep, lustrous silver; her eyes were weak, but bright and clear.

It struck Mai suddenly that Azula would have been devastatingly jealous at seeing her so well preserved. The dead princess would have aged like her mother, a beauty in youth, all loveliness stolen by treacherous age. Life had been deeply unkind to Ursa, though death, at least, saw her remembered as the woman she truly had been.

And then Mai noticed that Tomo's eyes had traveled to her right hand, resting on the arm of her chair. She had ceased bothering to conceal it years before, but now she wondered if the sight frightened him. Physical evidence of war often did that to those who dallied too long in libraries. But no matter; the boy was here, and Mai would tell him what he asked.

"Nonsense," she answered finally, her voice brisk with decision. "I'm still alive, you know, it isn't as though I had to make a particularly long trip."

* * *

_I am sure you know how appreciated reviews are..._


	2. The First Questions

_Chapter Two: The First Questions_

Mai sat back in her chair, and pondered the idiocy of scholars.

Over the course of her life, she had had the misfortune to become acquainted with several men and women who called themselves wise; and worse, to attend their funerals. There was no occasion that gave scholars more license to talk than the death of a crony, and while Mai appreciated the irony of so much breath being wasted on the dead, the hours wasted left her bitter. She could never understand why the living insisted on looking backwards so often; and to make the past a life's work, as the scholarly set did, seemed to Mai the height of petty foolishness.

A small, pompous cough punctuated her thoughts. "There," said Tomo, as he laid a final sheet of parchment on the portable desk he had been assembling for the past quarter-hour. "I am all ready, Grandmother."

"Lovely," she said, lightly, and the smallest flush touched the young man's pale cheeks. _Scholars. _"I, ah, I have questions prepared, Grandmother, if you would not mind my taking the, ah… taking the…"

Mai sighed. "Yes, boy, ask your questions. Agni knows I've not a clue where to begin. I've lived a long time, you know." Tomo spent a few minutes verifying the facts of her birth and early years. There were records, of course, but Mai preferred to extend relating this neutral portion of her history, and raised no objection.

"Now," her grandson muttered, scanning his fresh notations, "The Red Month and the Fall occurred in the fifth year of Ozai's reign. You would have been 16, yes, Grandmother?"

"I was."

"Where were you when the atrocities began?" Tomo wet his brush, and sat poised, waiting.

Mai gazed out at the small, sprawling garden beneath her short balcony. It was a harsh and beautiful view; a few early blossoms fluttered on the long, lean branches of the peach tree, tender spokes of green poked up from the old winter mulch. A view that suited her; a fitting backdrop for this interview, this… confession.

"I was in the Old Capital."

Her grandson's eyebrows rose. "The Capital? But why, Grandmother? You were raised largely in Omashu, were you not?"

A grim smile touched Mai's thin lips; they had come to the first little lie, the first deception she had constructed in order to build her family. "No," she said. "I lived in Omashu for less than a year. My father was appointed governor there when I was fifteen, and I left shortly after my sixteenth birthday. When the Comet came, I was living in my parent's home in the Capital."

"I… I see." Tomo put down further notes in his delicate script. "You must have been right at the heart of things, then. The worst of the atrocities were recorded in the areas near the Old Capital; the Fire Nation death toll was highest there, strangely enough." He wet his brush again. "Can you describe it, Grandmother? How did the madness begin?"

_She remembered the feeling of those early days, just before Sozin's Comet had reared in the sky. The restlessness that settled over everyone, bender or no; the rising heat, painting the world in hazy reds and golds. She remembered the spasms of lust that had gripped her, breathless moments of empty desire almost painful in their futility; the nights cut short and stifling._

_The nation had writhed for a week in that state of half-seduction. Noblewomen were kept indoors by their husbands and fathers, while their sons prowled the streets, hungry. The heat and tension grew higher every day; the spates of lust grew longer, and the noise of the city grew louder._

_Mai spent the days with Azula and Ty Lee, languorous and itchy. The Princess had to be forcibly confined, as for the first time in her memory, the Fire Lord had restricted her movements to the palace. He allowed only her two friends for company, and male guards were banished from Azula's wing on pain of death. It was torturous, but Ozai knew both the looming storm, and his daughter. Royal virtue was too valuable to chance._

_And then, seven days after the first symptoms, the night broke to a red sky. The sun nearly disappeared, reduced to a dim, pale orb, suffocated by the brilliance that was Sozin's Comet. It seared the heavens, this gift of Agni, a flaming mass of energy and searing light. It daubed the clouds with celestial blood; the world turned red, cast anew in ruddy, shifting brightness. Shadows seemed to wane and die, trees began to burn, and the very ground seemed to buck in heat beneath their feet._

_On the morning of that eighth day, the Fire Nation went mad._

"…Seemed as if the Fire Nation had gone mad," her grandson repeated, as he copied down her words. "Fascinating, Grandmother. So it really seemed to you that the Comet brought this change? Were there no mass rallies, no patriotic demonstrations? Many have posited—"

"No," said Mai, her voice harsh from unaccustomed use. "The politics came _after,_ boy, not before. Sozin's war was over for most by then; it was the Comet that ended it for us all." She met his gaze, and she knew her eyes burned. When her patience with modern theories and other nonsense had died, she was not sure; but Mai knew that she could not hear it another word of it.

Tomo's mouth was open slightly; it seemed she had shocked him. For a moment, he seemed far younger than his twenty-four years. "Yes, Grandmother," he said, quietly.

A silence fell between them. Tomo shuffled his papers, fiddled with his brush. Mai let him sit, grimly sipped the cooling tea her maid had brought her. Her right hand had begun to ache for the first time in years; cursing herself and this ridiculous urge, she said, "Well?"

Her grandson started. "Ah… would, sh-shall we continue, Grandmother? I, I can return another—"

"No," she snapped; something had begun to throb inside her, and she needed it gone, finally gone. " Ask the next question."


	3. Truth and Consequence

_A/N: I am not exactly holding myself to canon or the laws of nature here._

_Chapter Three: Truth and Consequence_

_It could have been an hour._

_Of sensation, only flashes remained, endless moments seared in her memory. The bright eyes of a dark prince as she joined him in ecstasy; an arc of blood, shining as it whipped through the air. The salty tang of sweat and tears of joy, meeting her tongue. Screams of death and agony, mingled with an almost musical hum in her ears. Burning flesh and hair, the smoke seeping into her pores, a carnal perfume. _

_Hot bodies pressed against her own; metal once cool inside her sleeves now searing her skin with their glorious heat._

_Of thoughts and reason, there was very little. Mai remembered most a sense of strength and power she had never conceived; a wave of victory and violence that carried her, spoke to her… needed her. She had known no doubts, no remorse; just a driving, irresistible need to conquer and kill, to use the strength given her for some unknown and wonderful end. Body and spirit were one, or perhaps they were nothing, all identity washed from a form no longer truly hers. She and her nation were slaves of this force, bound and beholden to the core of their natures, the celestial source of their power; they wanted and loved it, and they had no choice. _

_It could have been an hour. It could have been a year._

"A month," whispered her grandson. "All that carnage, all that death… in just one month." The boy's voice was low and anguished now, and he skimmed his sheets of facts and numbers in what seemed like desperation. "Forty-thousand is the lowest estimated toll. And sixty percent of the dead were Fire Nation… How… how is such a thing _possible?_"

Tomo met her eyes; his gaze was young, and almost accusing. Mai ached for him; she could give him no answers he would take easily.

"It was the Comet," she said, low and calm. The worst of it was over, she knew; her crimes were at last confessed. "It took us in its palm and crushed us, melted us down so that only our cores remained. And our cores belonged to it."

The scholar simply looked at her; the shock had not yet faded from his eyes or his face, but as she watched, his professional skepticism began to creep forward, erasing those lines of belief.

"You will never truly understand this," she said. "It is a thing beyond your time. The power of spirits and the strength they give has largely left the world by now; I see no way to impress on you how real this was, how much it shaped us. When the last Avatar was slain--"

"The Avatar was a diplomat," her grandson said. "Appointed in the earliest times to mediate and keep peace between the nations. What bending abilities he may have had… they simply aren't relevant. There are efforts to reinstate that position today, did you know that, Grandmother? Most of the candidates being considered have no bending abilities at all, much less control of all the elements." Tomo's tone was brisk, confident. Like all good scholars, he kept the theory, defended the writ in the face of any doubt. This was, Mai realized, the lens he used to view his world. An absurd, flimsy, shallow lens it was… but he loved it, and would not see beyond it.

It chafed at her, but there it was. The truth, Mai had long been forced to see, was often replaced to serve those who came after. No amount of truth would change minds like the one before her, and the thought of insistence wearied her bones.

"As you wish," she said, quietly.


	4. Blood

_Chapter Four: Blood_

"Well," said Tomo, "That covers the Madness, I suppose." An air of satisfied accomplishment had settled about him; Mai spared a moment to muse how much scholarship must be simple self-deception. "What happened after all that, Grandmother?" the boy continued. "I've studied the aftermath of the Madness, of course, but the records are all rather terse. What was the general mood in the Capital?"

Mai smiled, cold and grim. "I was not in the Capital when the month ended," she said.

Her grandson looked up in surprise, and began to shuffle through his papers seemingly by instinct. "Ah… but Grandmother, you told me yourself you were in the Capital when the Madness began," he said, a touch of concern in his voice. Tomo extended a sheet of parchment, painted with his delicate characters, and indicated her discrepant words. "You see? Of course," he said, and his brow cleared, as though understanding, "I mean also the fields and areas around the city. I imagine some higher citizens may have been evacuated to safer areas--"

Mai laughed.

* * *

_Cold. That was the first reality to return._

_Others followed with cruel haste; hunger, exhaustion, a growing spike of terror in her blood. Then awareness rose with her senses. She was kneeling on an endless plain of dewy grass, shivering as a wan and pale sun rose before her. Vast walls of stone rose in the near distance, swatting at her memory, feeding her fear. She was alone._

_Mai tried to stand, but her knees gave out; she found she was trembling from head to foot. Forcing control into limp limbs and muscles, she began to look herself over. Her skin and clothes were stiff, and heavy; exhausted, terrified, half starved, it took a moment for Mai to understand why._

_She was covered in blood._

_Most of it was dry and black by now, but splatters across her bodice and skirt still glistened with life recently shed. She ran her hands, stained brown with vital fluid, down the front of her robe; silk turned rough with gore met her touch. Most of her hair was matted and hard with the stuff, and Mai wondered, dazed with horror, if she would even recognize her own face._

_A scouting party from Ba Sing Se found her, hours later; she had not moved. Wild urges to run, to strike with weapons long since spent rose within her, but she was powerless. They asked for her name and her home, and she told them as they bound her. Their eyes were hollow, their faces gaunt; they threw her over the back of a mount, and warned her not to move; they would kill her. Mai believed them, and almost asked for death. _

* * *

Tomo had stopped writing. Mai watched him; his head was bowed, his hands gripped tightly in his lap. Once again they sat unspeaking, this silence broken only by her grandson's ragged breath.

Minutes passed. Mai, watching darkness settle in her garden, had almost drifted into an uneasy doze when her grandson spoke suddenly. The words seemed wrenched from his mouth, as though he could scarcely justify or countenance their existence.

"Grandmother," he said, "Is this… is this true?" Mai made to answer, but he barged ahead. "It's impossible." Tomo rose and began to pace before her, hands twisting in agitation. "Impossible… a month of your life with no memory? A… a sixteen year old girl reaching Ba Sing Se _on foot_ from the Old Capital? To wake up doused in_blood?_ Grandmother…" he paused, breathing deeply, clearly struggling to regain control, and in spite of herself, Mai felt a cruel curiosity bubbling under natural concern. What else could this rigid young mind conjure to circumvent her honesty?

"Grandmother," the young scholar began again, meeting her eyes directly. "Why would you say these things? Why would you tell me all this? It… _it cannot possibly be true._"

Mai closed her eyes. She had accepted his folly, his blindness, countless times over the past hours; this should be no different.

And yet, it was.

_Why?_ The tired old woman in her demanded. _Why bother the boy any more? What good will it do you?_

"I am ninety-one years old," she said softly, more to herself than her audience. "And I have been damned many times over. But never once as a liar."

She looked sharply at her grandson; locked in her gaze, he settled slowly back to his desk, staring at her. Mai steeled herself; why was it harder to ask than to answer?

"I wonder, grandson. What do the scholars say of the Red Trials?"

* * *

A/N: Ah, the return of proper formatting. Thanks for the reviews, all! 


	5. Two Trials

_Chapter Five: Two Trials_

There was an instant of peace as Tomo drew breath, over before it began. "The Red Trials," her grandson repeated, his voice blank. "A series of hearings and executions of Fire Nation royalty in the weeks following Ozai's Fall." Tomo paused, habit relinquishing its grip on his tongue. "Grandmother, why--"

"Is that all?"

Once again he stopped, seeming to gather information from the long shelves of his mind. "Well… yes, Grandmother, I believe it is. There are, there are…" The boy swallowed. "Ah… accounts of the exact proceedings, naturally, but I admit that my own field of interest lies more in the… the_ civilized_ aftermath of the Madness."

"I see," said Mai. She watched him closely, part of her wondering how had it come to this. How had such malignant, happy blindness been preserved so long that _she_was the only one left to destroy it? Why had _she_ been given the scythe?

Arms and armor no longer suited her; but it seemed she was forced into battle once more.

* * *

_The prisoners watched from a guarded balcony, packed in aching rows designed to leave their view unobstructed. The message was blunt as their captors; they were every one meant to watch, and heed. Those who survived the coming days were meant to remember._

_Mai stood pressed against her fellows; the stench rising from the prison balcony was the stuff of nightmares, but it no longer troubled her. Six days had slipped by since her awakening, and she was dead to all sensation._

_The Fire Nation prisoners taken near Ba Sing Se had been carted in wagons back to their wrecked and smoldering capital. Their hands and feet were manacled in stone, and a heavy collar rested on every neck. They were forbidden to speak or rise without orders; they were fed, but remained in the clothes that bore witness to their crimes._

_Now the same group waited under the cold, brilliant moon for some unknown end. Half-formed fears had begun to shift at the back of Mai's uneasy mind, but she had no strength to study or kill them. She watched the moon instead, wondering what the spirit saw as she gazed on the distant earth; wondering what she knew._

* * *

"You were a prisoner of _war_, Grandmother?" her grandson hissed, face white. "You… you witnessed the Red Trials? How… why have you never—"

Hush." Her voice was like a whip; Tomo flinched, and fell mercifully silent.

* * *

_Ozai was the first._

_It was natural, of course. The Earth Kingdom was parched for vengeance, and who better to whet their thirst than the Fire Lord? More would slake them soon, but best to begin with the safest death._

_They walked him out into the courtyard (once a palace sporting pavilion—Mai recognized it suddenly.) Ozai's hair hung wild and loose, and he was naked to the waste. His chest, his arms, the ragged shreds of his trousers, all bore the same bloody dye as so many of his subjects. His face was dark with gore as well, but Mai would have recognized him anywhere. Captured, degraded and filthy, rings of stone wound as restraints around his body, Ozai was perhaps more the Fire Lord than he had ever been. _

_They read off his crimes; hours passed. Citizens of the Earth Kingdom hurled garbage and screamed obscenities, often drowning the voices of the magistrate._

_At last, the magistrate turned stiffly to a small council seated behind him. All noise died._

"_These are the crimes for which Ozai, son of Azulon, is brought before you today," he said, and although his voice was not loud, it echoed across the courtyard and through Mai like a bell. "What punishment do you accord him?"_

_The question trembled in the air for what seemed a lifetime. And then—_

"_Death," came the terse reply. The Earth Kingdom citizens erupted, and all around her, Mai felt a shiver pass through the prisoners._

_They did it then, forcing the Fire Lord to his knees in the center of the courtyard, and taking his head off with a single dash of a stone blade. Blood dashed in a spray against the pale stones of the courtyard; Mai closed her eyes, feeling the heat grow behind them._

* * *

Tomo was green, sweating through his stiff robes. Mai called for more tea, and they drank together. At last, the boy laid down his cup and made to rise.

"Thank you, Grandmother," he began, tripping over his words. "Thank- thank you for his interview, I believe I have all I need, I must be—"

"Sit," Mai ordered.

He sat, slowly, meeting her iron gaze with desperate eyes. She spoke before he could start again.

"You started this, boy. And I will finish it."

* * *

_Mai did not first recognize the next figure they brought in; or perhaps she refused to._

_The girl was too small, too weak, too… dead. Her shoulders were dropped, her head hung as though in exhaustion or despair. She could not, or would not stand; guards gripped both her arms to keep her upright, and her legs curled, limp, beneath her. She was painted in dried blood, over every inch of her skin, even more than her father before her._

_Azula seemed like a cotton doll, shrunken after joyous play in the bath._

_And so it had been, Mai suddenly understood. The ecstasy of the Comet had given her princess life, strength, happiness she had never known. Even Azula's greedy mind could not conceive of such heights, and when they came to her, she had drunk from that endless well and used its power._

_The Comet filled her that month, gave her everything. And then it drained her dry._

_And Mai gazed down at Azula, and saw that she was already dead. She breathed, but her soul was gone, extinguished with the force that brought her to life._

_And so she watched through cold eyes as they read Azula's crimes, listened as they jeered and spat, as they ordered her death. _

_Mai looked on, dry and cool as the Princess's blood ran through the stones, mingling with her father's. She made no sound._

_But later, Mai watched the moon disappear in the brightening dawn, and mourned for her friend._


	6. A Dedication

_Chapter Six: A Dedication_

_They tried Zuko next._

_The day had passed in an agony of unmeasured time; Mai lay on the floor of the common cell she shared with so many sleeping bodies and shivered, despite the powerful heat. She could not sleep, not even close her eyes without his face rising before her. Many faces; a young prince with smooth, pale skin who made her cheeks burn; a handsome boy with panic in his golden eyes, pushing her into a fountain. Tears flowing down a face twisted in pain; the fresh, blistered scar that made her want him even more._

_And all too soon, she was standing in the prison balcony again, swaying with exhaustion and murmuring every prayer to Agni she could remember. More than once, her stiff fingers slipped inside her ragged sleeves, searching for the reassurance of her knives. And every time, their absence sent waves of nausea flooding through her; bitterness flooded her mouth, and sweat began to prickle on her brow._

_They brought him out as they had his father and sister, bloodied and bound in bands of stone. He was cleaner than they had been, though, and a spasm of hope gripped Mai. Perhaps, perhaps he had withstood the madness, somehow ignored the call of the Comet. Perhaps they would spare him… _

_Memories flashed through her, seizing her in with icy, iron fingers; faces, screams, hot blood bathing her skin. And his, his face, transfixed with the joy that had taken them all, killing alongside her, loving her in the brittle reddened grass, leaving her as inorexable tides of passion swept them apart…_

"_No," she whispered, voice broken and raw after long days of silence. Her eyes grew hot as she gazed down at her prince; she could see the change in him now, etched on his face, vivid as the old scar. She knew him, and she knew he remembered, just as she did… Zuko knew his penalty, and accepted it._

_They read his crimes, but Mai did not hear. It seemed to her that the crowds had faded to nothing, the little jury and her fellow prisoners disappeared. The world was empty but for the two of them, and the silence echoed with words forever unspoken. She drank in his face, his body, the soft sweep of his hair. She seared his eyes into her heart, memorized his calloused hands, the heat of his skin against her own. The smell of him filled her, smoke and steel, evening rain and clean robes, fruit tarts. His shoulders, his feet, the way his nose ran so smoothly from his face. His jealousy, his joy, his painful fury; the hard, rough lines of his body as conjured fire. How his smile always seemed unsure…_

"_Death,"_

_A single word brought the world back in cruel rush; her eyes wrenched into focus; the guards approached him, and Mai was at the balcony rail without knowing how. She leaned forward, sense gone, driven by visceral desperation. "No!" she choked, and the figures below her stopped for a moment. Zuko saw her, and she watched as relief washed his features. Their eyes locked as the Earth Kingdom guards pulled him to the brown-stained center of the courtyard. Strong arms tired to drag her back from the rail, but she held her grip on the edge; her vision was graying but she saw his lips move and heard the low gravel of his voice as though he held her close._

"_I accept my fate, Mai."_

_And then there was no more time._

_Screams echoed in her ears as they dragged her away. They threw her in a separate cell, a dark cell._

_And Mai was alone with her memories._


	7. Innocence and Guilt

_Chapter Seven: Innocence and Guilt  
_

"Grandmother?"

The present swam slowly into focus as the past faded from Mai's vision. Her grandson knelt before her, his face creased with concern. "Grandmother?" he repeated. "Should… should I call for the maid? Or a physician? I—"

Mai shook her head, clearing out the memories; her eyes were wet. "No," she said softly. "I am… quite well." Tomo continued to stare; it seemed he expected her to crumble to dust in a moment.

Minutes passed in another long silence; a soft, thoughtful quiet now, unstrained by disbelief. The sun had set, and lamps had been lit about the dark room. Mai was suddenly aware of the chill, and of a cloak draped about her shoulders. Tomo's cloak, she realized, in an odd rush of gratified surprise.

"Grandmother," Tomo began, hesitantly. He seemed engaged in some cognitive struggle; habit wanted Mai to interrupt, but instinct kept her silent. It was the boy's turn to move.

Tomo stood as though to begin pacing; he shook his head violently against some safer idea, pressed his lips together and sat again. He was perfectly still for one strange moment. Then the boy straightened his robes, wet his brush, and looked her straight in the eye. "Did the Red Trials continue after the death of Prince Zuko, Grandmother?"

His bluntness, his confidence shocked her for a moment. Well played, boy, she thought, with an absurd glow of pride. "Yes," she said, pleased that her voice was quite steady. "General Iroh, the Dragon of the West, was tried the next day along with Lady Ursa." The names ached gently on her tongue; they had suffered so much, those two kind souls.

"What were their sentences?"

"They were both confined for several years as an assurance of public safety," she answered. "But pardoned. Many witnesses spoke to their past good deeds, and neither bore the signs of the carnage as the rest of the Royal family had." Very little remained to her of the few days following Zuko's death, but the great General's quiet grief had penetrated the storm of pain raging within her. He mourned as she did; the powerful comfort of seeing that she was not alone had penetrated Mai's terrible grief.

Iroh's presence had eased the urgency of her anguish. But Lady Ursa had saved her. She shone in Mai's memory, every detail brilliant and clear as though Zuko's mother stood before her now. Mai could see the delicate tears shining on her pale cheeks, the clean brown robes she had worn in exile, the white threading through her dark hair. She could hear the restless quiet of the crowd as witnesses demanded to testify of Ursa's innocence; she could feel her own throbbing misery echoed in Ursa's heart as she stood on stones washed with the blood of her children.

Yet Ursa displayed none of the wild grief that Mai had been unable to control. Despite her tears, her face was serene, and when asked to speak, her voice was clear and calm. Mai had not been able to look away; it seemed to her that Lady Ursa stood beneath all the pain of the world, and yet did not break. It lined her face, that terrible weight, stole her beauty, whitened her hair—but she stood straight and bore it with unsurpassable grace.

"I have read accounts of Lady Ursa's greatness," Tomo admitted. "But I did not know she had been tried."

"Yes, they would have kept that quiet," Mai said, an edge to her voice. "She became quite well-loved in later years. I suppose it wouldn't do to have it known how close they came to taking her head off."

Her grandson gazed at her for a moment; shock passed over his face, followed by an infuriating blankness. He looked down once more at his careful notes, and Mai took a breath, ready to begin a scathing diatribe, but she was interrupted.

"You are right, Grandmother." Mai stared at her grandson; the young man met her gaze.

"The scholars were wrong to omit this, to ignore it. It was… it was a crime."

Mai closed her eyes, breathing deeply. A wry smile spread her lips, and an irrepressible urge to laugh overcame her. Through her soft laughter she said, "Yes. You are quite right about that. I am glad to hear you say it, boy."

Tomo chuckled nervously; they sat together in the dim light, the air seeming fresher than it had moments before. "Well," said Mai, suddenly brisk. "Is there anything else you would like to know, grandson, or can an old woman go to her bed at last?"

Tomo paused, the nervous smile fading from his face. He looked at her, and she was caught by the intensity of his gaze.

"Grandmother," he said, in a voice just higher than a whisper. "I… I have learned an enormous amount tonight, and I thank you for it. But one thing remains… I cannot imagine where it belongs in the story."

Mai remained silent. She knew exactly where he intended to take her, and wondered how he would get there.

"The only explanation I can think of… Grandmother, was your hand injured during the Madness?"

She met his eyes. "No," she said.

"Were you maimed before the Comet arrived?"

"No."

Tomo frowned, and shook his head. "Grandmother, I don't understand. Was your injury an accident? How could such a thing have happened? Did you—"

Mai held up her good hand; he fell silent. "The Red Trials," she said slowly, "did not end with the Royal Family." Tomo opened his mouth again, but she silenced him with a sharp look. "We were all judged." Mai sighed, and looked down at what remained of her right hand.

"And all of us were punished."

* * *

_Author's Note: I hope everyone is enjoying the story. I can't believe I've gotten this far already! I really appreciate everyone who has left reviews and sort of beseech you to continue or do so if you haven't yet. Reviews are unbelievably encouraging, and really help me feel like I am doing something worthwhile._

_Thanks! _


	8. What is Lost

_Author's Note: This is an intense chapter. It contains some imagery that might be difficult for the squeamish.  
_

* * *

_ Chapter Eight: What is Lost_

"They kept me in a separate cell; it must have been days before I saw daylight." Mai murmured, her voice quiet and monotonous. This cruelest secret had been buried very deep; Mai could almost smell the dry earth as she dug it from recesses of her mind.

"When they came for me, my robes were rotting, from the blood and sweat. I had terrible sores on my feet; I could barely stand from the pain. They doused me in lye—" she shuddered, old agony burning through the years. "And then they brought me to trial.

"They had set up tribunals in the old palace rooms, to pass judgment on each of us. Ten citizens of the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribes on each jury, men and women both. They could kill or spare us as they wished.

"Their faces terrified me; hard, cold faces, every one scored with lines of suffering. Some had dead eyes; others' blazed with terrible zeal. They had all been victims of our madness, and I knew their justice would be cruel." Mai met her grandson's eyes, so bright in his pale face. "I wished they would kill me."

* * *

_She had stood for what seemed hours as they questioned her, hands bound once more in stone shackles. Several times she had collapsed onto the chill, ornate floor, and each time, guards had come to guide her firmly to her feet. Towards the end, they simply held her between them, and Mai's mind swam with the image of Azula, curled like a rag doll between her captors._

_Her jury read her name and details off sheaves of paper, but Mai knew that she herself was their evidence. The blood on her robes and her skin spoke louder than her feeble answers; she was guilty, guilty, and nothing she said could turn that blame to innocence. _

_Nothing…_

_And as she realized this, something began to ease inside Mai. The burning mess of anguish in her gut, her eyes and her heart slowly cooled; a calm, hollow center gradually emerged within her. They would kill her and that would be the end. No more pain, no more grief, no more fear—just the end. Dying, she thought, would be so much easier than living._

_At last, the chairwoman stood, holding a small piece of parchment before her. "Mai of Omashu, daughter of Hong," she read in cool tones, "For your crimes against our people in this past Red Month, and for the unspeakable acts of your nation, you are sentenced to loose four fingers from your right hand. Your right hand as the hand that drew our blood; one finger for every week of the slaughter." _

_For a moment that spanned a lifetime, Mai could not breathe. Her pulse thundered in her ears; her eyes caught those of the chairwoman, and they were ice. A slivered smile sliced the woman's lips; dagger-like cold pierced Mai's heart, and she opened her mouth to beg for death—_

_But the woman waved to the guards, and they carried her out; she fainted before she could scream._

* * *

There was a foreign warmth on her left hand; Tomo held it gently, she realized. He was watching her. 

Mai took a breath, and kept digging.

* * *

_There were many ways they could have shown her mercy, in those next hellish days, but they didn't._

_They could have taken four fingers at once, spared her the pain of repeating the act so many separate times._

_They didn't._

_They could have told her which finger they meant to take the next time, instead of leaving her writhing on the floor of her cell in a fever of agony and dread._

_They didn't. _

_They could have kept to a schedule, so should would have some expectation of when her misery would multiply again._

_But they didn't._

_By the last time, when they had left her with her thumb and little finger, Mai could not walk from fever. Her skin burned, but she was freezing to death; pain danced in every inch of her body. Her vision was bright and wet, and misty, a haze of color and light, of hallucinations she did not resist. When they dragged her back to the butcher the final time, she remembered, Zuko had stood before her. He tried to speak to her, he needed to, but his words were mumbled and slurred… she couldn't understand, and she begged him to speak clearly and talk to her, and help her… why wouldn't he help her, standing right there, couldn't he see…_

_And then his face was next to her own, and he smelled like blood… the blade sank through the base of her thumb, and Mai went back to the blackness._

* * *

_A/N: Ah... in case anyone is interested, Mai's father's name (Hong) comes from the amazing "Excerpts from the Diary of Princess Ursa," by Karalora. Oh, and the reviews are phenomenal! Thank you so much!  
_


	9. Learning

_Chapter Nine: Learning _

_She woke on a small cot, in a room that smelled of rigorous cleanliness; she did not open her eyes. It was intensely quiet, but a sense movement drifted about above her. Mai did not want to know where she was, and shifted slightly on the cot, fighting for sleep. An itch of curiosity grated suddenly on her spine._

"_Well. It seems we've brought another one back, Tzian," said a soft, satisfied voice just above her. A cool hand met her forehead, and despite herself, Mai opened her eyes. "Oh! And the lucky soul is awake!" Even in excitement, the woman kept her voice low; blinking through the near-total darkness, Mai heard a shuffle of slippers hurrying in her direction. She opened dry lips, but a new voice cut her off. "Hush, dear. You mustn't wake any of the others." Water chuckled in a nearby basin, and moist cloth was pressed gently against her mouth. "Shh," the second woman murmured as the cloth moved slowly in smooth circles over her cheeks and forehead. Mai abandoned sight and closed her eyes. She sensed rather than saw as the second woman knelt more comfortably by her bed. "I'll take her, An-Li," was whispered by her ear, and another pair of feet padded away._

_Mai tried to speak, but was hushed again. "Soon," said the voice, and something kept her silent. The woman—Tzian?—wet her cloth again, and Mai felt it move softly through her hair. She must have dozed for a few moments; the cloth was dry now, lightly dabbing her face._

"_Now," said the voice, still quiet. "You are in the New Capital healing house. You were brought here three weeks ago following the execution of your sentence. You were in a bad way, dear; I can tell you there were times I thought you'd never wake."_

_A blissful heartbeat of confusion… _

_All at once, sensation and memory flooded Mai's mind. Red skies and the sight of blood flashed across her vision; screams and echoing judgments rang deafening in her ears… she felt Zuko's heartbeat quicken beneath her palms… _

_And then, pain… _

_Mai bolted upright as needles raced down her right arm, bound tightly to her chest; her hoarse cry was stifled by Tzian's hand pressing, hard, against her mouth.__"Shh…" the woman said, voice gentle despite the force of her fingers. Mai began to tremble in silence, hot shudders of agony radiating from her right shoulder, intensifying as the waves gripped her phantom fingers and the wounds where they belonged. The nurse took Mai's left hand in her own, and kissed it softy; sitting on the cot, she pressed Mai's head to her chest. "Hush, dear," she murmured. "It's a terrible thing, but others came off with the like, and worse."_

_They remained as they were for some empty span of time; slowly, slowly, the pain shrank and settled to an acid throb in Mai's right hand. She breathed as calmly as she could, stamping on sparks of panic beginning to illuminate the dark corners of her mind. A thousand wordless questions buzzed, and when the need to speak grew too terrible, she whispered, "Why… why am I here? I'm a Fire Nation captive, I was in prison—"_

"_Yes," Tzian murmured, "and now your debts are collected. The Council of Justice decided that surviving prisoners should be healed, treated and relocated." The nurse eased Mai back to her pillow; the windows were shuttered, but Mai could see her outline, the glitter of her eyes. "Once you're fully well, you'll be released." She paused, waiting until Mai had nearly drifted back to sweet oblivion. "You're a lucky one, dear," Tzian whispered, and glided away._

* * *

_ Days and nights blurred in swaths of memory, pinned in place by moments of clarity. The taste of solid food (she hated fish, but did not complain), fresh air on her face through a barred window; pressure on the soles of her feet, the wonderful pain of progress as they finally supported her weight._

_And other things. Asking Tzian what she knew of Fire Nation survivors, how to discover what had become of her family. Tzian's face grew distant, and she spoke curtly of registries Mai could contact when she was released; Mai was fairly certain that Tzian knew firsthand the fate of her own kin, and did not ask again._

_Then there was the loss of her hair, shorn close to her scalp "to prevent disease," she had been told. "And there was no saving it anyway, dear," another nurse had blithely informed her. "It was a solid mess like I've never seen, matted with blood and such." Mai just glared, and kept running her fingers over the stubble._

_But the worst, the worst was when they came to see her hand. A nurse and a strange doctor this time, and Mai sat with a frozen face as they untied the sling that pressed her right hand to her chest, and slowly unwrapped the bandages. _

_It was agony. The stiff, shrunken muscles in her right arm cried out in protest as they were forced to unfamiliar action; the skin under the white linen shivered and ached with fresh exposure. Mai pressed her lips together, and forced herself silent. She had shed too many tears for her people's crimes; she would not cry again._

_Then they came to her hand, the bandage peeling away in curls like the skin of an orange. Her wrist was swollen and an angry red; the doctor gave the nurse an order, and she nodded. The rest of the wrapping came away quickly, falling from the little that remained of Mai's once deadly right hand. _

_Four stumps, clean but pink and hideous were all that remained of her thumb, index, middle and ring fingers. Only her little finger remained, dangling pathetic and helpless in some horrible imitation of normalcy. Bile rose in her throat, and the pain, dulled for so long, swamped her as though the doctor had crushed those awful stumps. Her breath was shallow and a tinny ringing filled her ears; her vision grayed._

"_Well," said the doctor. "This is healing quite nicely." He looked at Mai, and cocked a bitter grin. "You're lucky the rot didn't take your whole hand, girl. All in all, you are quite a success. I expect I'll release you before the month is out; good thing too, we can always use another bed."_

_He left the nurse to bathe her arm in herbs, as cold tears leaked down Mai's face._

* * *

_ A/N: I hope you are enjoying all this. Happy Holidays!  
_


	10. Final Fragments

_A/N: Let me repeat: this is not the final chapter. Close, but not quite yet._

* * *

_Chapter Ten: Final Fragments_

_Two weeks later, Mai stood outside the healing house, waiting for the cripples' wagon bound for the ruins of the Fire Nation capital. Most of the captives were being returned there; the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes seemed to prefer keeping the captives together, for the time being._

_The day was brisk, so far south, but the sun warmed Mai through her layers of wool. That morning, the nurses had dressed her in a clean and awful brown robe, handed her a small satchel, and pushed her out of their care. Tzian had tied a kerchief over Mai's horribly short hair before she left, meeting her eyes for one odd moment; there was warmth there, but pain and bitterness as well. Mai had the sense that the woman loathed the idea of her, this Fire Nation girl, even as she pitied and cared for her actual charge._

_But that was behind her. The Capital—the Old Capital, she must remember—waited, and possibly family as well. Mai was by turns desperate to learn their fate and brimming with unconcern; she couldn't't reconcile it, and the dichotomy sawed on her conscience whenever her mind was still. The beast-child (and her mother's scolding voice rang through her mind, reminding Mai that the little pest's name was Tom-Tom) weighed her thoughts especially. What would the Comet have done to a child?_

_The cripples' wagon clattered up at last from the crude healing house stable; Mai watched the pair of ostrich-horses warily, and made to climb clumsily into the wooden cart. It was high, though, and she was one-handed and still weak; she struggled for a few moments, and said nothing when the driver approached and lifted her effortlessly over the side._

_Once settled, Mai opened the satchel the nurses had given her. Sorting through even those meager contents was difficult without her right hand. She was forced to balance the satchel on her knees, and nearly dropped the lot when the wagon lurched into movement. Mai pressed herself to ignore the amusement of her fellow invalids, to pretend her cheeks did not burn with shame; eventually, she successfully took stock of the satchel's contents. It held a small loaf of brown bread, several white bandages, a few coins of what must have been Earth Kingdom currency, and a little vial of dark liquid. "For the pain," read the note glued to the bottle. "Take sparingly." _

_The cart lurched, banging Mai's right hand, still bandaged and resting in a loose sling, into the knee of the tall man next to her. She hissed as the stumps of her fingers began to wail in a now-familiar chorus; Mai grasped the small vial tightly in her good hand, and wondered how long she could make it last._

* * *

_The old woman at the cramped little desk sifted through another mountain of paper, her wizened eyes narrowed. "I'm sure there was a document somewhere," she muttered, and looked at Mai again. "The Governor of Omashu, you said? What are the names, I've forgotten…"  
_

"_Lord Hong, Lady Haku and their son Tom-Tom," Mai repeated dully. The woman had a memory like rice-sifter. "They had only lived in Omashu for about six months when the Comet came—"_

"_Ah!" cried the clerk. "Here we are… yes, I knew I'd seen this somewhere." She straitened her small, stooped form, coughed, and read, "'Hong, former Fire Nation governor of Omashu, was tried by the Council of Justice shortly after the royal executions. He testified to his crimes…' yes, yes, girl his family is mentioned somewhere… oh yes. 'He stated that he had witnessed the deaths of his wife and son, but did not know the whereabouts of his daughter." The old eyes brightened. 'And here you are, girl! And now your father seems to have gone missing in your stead. Dear me, what are the chances?__"__ The woman paused, fiddling with a scrap of parchment. She seemed to expect some horrible spectacle out of Mai any moment; she started as inspiration struck her and and cried, _"_I must prepare a cross-reference, girl, if you'll excuse me…" The shriveled old thing tottered off, calling to an underling for some indispensable tool of bureaucracy._

_Mai remained in her chair. Her heart was beating terribly fast, but her breathing was slow. She blinked, and found that her eyes were dry; painfully dry. She listened to the noise growing behind her, the swell of her nervous countrymen. Mai knew her audience was over, knew she ought to leave, grieve decently and wait for some new fate to find her… but for a moment, she did not want to move. _

_Mai closed her eyes, and looked inside._

_There was pain there. It was hard to recognize at first; it leaked slowly from among the fresh scars on her heart, and drew even from the constant burn in her right hand. But it came through, this new, particular pain, tasting bitter and making her itch. It dripped through her like an irritating rain, settling in her bones and making her ache._

_It was terrible, she knew. But hurt had changed her; pain was a facet of her being now, burned into her soul. It could no longer break her. Mai sat quietly and remembered the years of strict discipline, words spoken in anger, a rainy afternoon spent reading tales of the spirits together. An endless fitting for her first school uniform, how her mother had slapped her for fidgeting again; how she had glowed with pride when she sent her daughter off wearing the rich, beautiful thing._

_She remembered seeing her brother for the first time, how incredible and galling it was that he had finally been born; wanting to love him, and wanting to spite her parents for being so happy. The first time she had called him the beast-child, and the hurt in her mother's eyes. Being sent to her room on his first birthday for giving him a throwing-star as a gift._

_Seeing him in the Avatar's arms and walking away, because Azula had not needed to speak the order for Mai to understand._

_Pulling away from hugs and kisses, the last time, and then she was free. Or just a slave to another mistress, she realized too late._

_Mai sat and remembered until a guard and a healer came to escort her out. Dry eyed, she smiled ad left quickly before they could question her. Both men were busy, and they did not follow._

* * *

_ The ruined crater-city was strange to Mai, and yet jarringly familiar. She picked her way around charred stone and torn-up cobbles, guided as much by landmark as instinct, and a sense of where the sun should sit at this time of day._

_She did not go to the boarding house where she slept, one of the many constructed to house the former captives. She passed through the little ugly markets that had sprung up in popular streets. She did not visit the healer as she had promised to, although the stumps of her missing fingers seemed to swell with misery under their graying bandages._

_It took Mai nearly an hour to find the place, once so close to the center of the city. She ignored the grating fears that it would be destroyed, or taken by the new government, or else unrecognizable._

_But at last, Mai stood with her back to wreckage of the Palace gates. She faced her parents house; black and charred, but miraculously whole. Her mother had been so proud to have a home so near the royal family, and Mai herself had appreciated the proximity to the prince. Her family had spent five years in that beautiful house, with parties that excited Mai in spite of herself, and long hours of hide-and-seek with Azula and Ty-Lee. (They had been to old to play, really, but none of the girls had wanted to stop.) Zuko had come to see her in this house; her mother had even insisted upon giving birth to Tom-Tom here. She had loved this house, and Mai had loved it too. _

_For those five years, before Omashu, before the war had touched them, before the Comet… her family had been very nearly happy._

_Mai eased up the broken steps and placed her left hand on one of the large, blackened doors. It creaked open at her touch (the hinges were nearly gone), revealing a slice of dusty blackness. Mai breathed in the must, and readied herself for another goodbye._

_The sound of stumbling echoed from within, punctuated by a harsh hacking, and the smack of limbs on stone._

"_Please," rasped a horrible, thin voice. "Leave me be. I've paid for my sins a thousand times over. I beg you—" the voice broke, shrank to a hissing sob. "Oh, Agni... let me die in peace!" _

* * *

_ A/N: Hmm, cliffhanger. Just so you know, I did NOT plan that._


End file.
